stormearthfire t1_iyyzalm wrote on December 5, 2022 at 5:43 AM

Reply to comment by mglyptostroboides in Why Roman Egypt was such a strange province by oni64

Egyptian farming is very much tied to the flood plains of the Nile river and it's annual innudation. The innudation process enriches the soil and determines the quality of the harvest.

Source: played a shit ton of Pharoah city sim back in the days

mglyptostroboides t1_iyzcbzd wrote on December 5, 2022 at 8:32 AM

I wasn't asking about the parenthetical about Egyptian agriculture being different from the rest of Roman territory. It was the implication from how that comment was worded that Rome introduced the very concept of agriculture to most of the places they conquered which is extremely wrong.

In fact, the whole comment was worded in such a way that it seems like the author literally thought Rome was going into places and introducing the very concepts of farming, language (?!???! what?!) and government....

See:

>Instead of being a Roman settlement, Egypt...

(contrasting Egypt with the rest of Roman territory)

and

>No need for the Romans to come in and establish things that were already there.

Does this mean the author of the comment literally thought people in, say, pre-Roman Gaul were just walking around, grunting wordlessly until the Romans taught them Latin? I'm pretty certain that's not what they meant, but you have to admit it was worded very ambiguously. However, in light of the fact that they (apparently?) assume the Romans introduced agriculture to most of their empire, I'm not sure what to think...

Pyranze t1_iyzfdv4 wrote on December 5, 2022 at 9:19 AM

I think they meant that the Romans introduced their versions of these things to those areas which would better integrate them into the Empire as a whole, whereas Egypt already had institutions and infrastructure that the Romans could use without issue.

Edit: re-reading it, I'm pretty sure that's what they meant. They said "the Egyptians already had [list of stuff] that worked" so I assume they meant the stuff worked for the Romans.

mglyptostroboides t1_iyzfzp4 wrote on December 5, 2022 at 9:28 AM

Ah! That changes a lot. I parsed that as "[things] and and economy that worked]". As if the "that worked" was referring to just the economy not the rest of the things they listed.